


Serendipity

by AvengersCompound (emilyevanston)



Category: Black Widow (Comics), Captain America (Movies), Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Deaf Clint Barton, F/F, F/M, Fluff, M/M, Marvel 616/MCU Crossover, Multi, Past Child Abuse, Past Torture, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, WinterWidowHawk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-08
Updated: 2019-01-08
Packaged: 2019-10-06 16:06:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17348312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emilyevanston/pseuds/AvengersCompound
Summary: There has been a lot of terrible things that Natasha, Bucky, and Clint have had to endure, but they’ve all lead here.





	Serendipity

> _Serendipity: The chance occurrence of unfortunate events with a beneficial outcome._

It was a long and dark path that led here.  Each thing, both large and small aligning just right so that one day the four or you would decide that you didn’t care anymore.  You had had enough and people could say what they liked about you, you were due some god damn fucking happiness and you would take it when you could.

The first was clear and not one many people knew about.  In 1928 an infant girl with bright red hair was taken from a Russian Orphanage and brought to a facility known as Krasnaya Komnata.  It was here the very first cog was put in place.  A girl barely able to raise her head had been selected to become an assassin and super soldier.

The next one was less clear.  What point in Bucky Barnes’ life could you point at and say; ‘That there is the reason you became the Winter Soldier’.

Certainly, if he hadn’t he’d likely have married, fathered some children and died of old age while you were still getting driven to and from school.

Maybe it was the experimentation that he went through when he was first captured by HYDRA.  Without that first lot of serum, it would have been unlikely he’d have survived when he fell from the train.  Or was it before that?  When he had signed up for the army in the first place.   Maybe it wasn’t even his doing?  Had his friend Steve Rogers not signed up for the super soldier program, and not then been made to perform like a circus animal, he’d have never been in place to save Bucky from HYDRA that first time.  Nor would he have been there to give his mind a shake the second time either.

Definitely, the fall was an important one.  When Sargent James Buchanan Barnes was listed as lost in combat and no one went to search for him.  When he was dragged through the snow, bleeding from the stump where his arm had been torn from his body, his body broken and shutting down.  When HYDRA pumped him full of serum and froze him, thus marking the start of decades of torture and mind control.

Next came Bucky’s transfer to the KGB.  Maybe it wasn’t as important to the two previous things.  Had a young ballerina not taken pity on the brainwashed assassin maybe she wouldn’t have been so curious about his memories when Steve had brought him into the group.  Maybe she wouldn’t have lingered as long as she did in the room when he was there waiting for him to acknowledge her.  If that same assassin hadn’t in turn taken pity on the ballerina and held himself back from the unspeakable acts that he was ordered to perform as part of her training, maybe he wouldn’t have been so keen to earn her forgiveness for the things he hadn’t been able to control.  Maybe they wouldn’t have circled each other the way they did.  Like two moths that were drawn to an open flame.

Or maybe that attraction they had might have been there either way.  The Red Room did leave its mark on both of them, that much was true.  Marks like that are hard to cover up and it did affect their later connection.

The next thing that happened was two boys who had bounced from one abusive home to the next finally bounced their way into a traveling circus.  The older of the two had a talent for pickpocketing and grifting that the circus decided they’d exploit.  The younger had a talent for acrobatics and archery that the circus decided to encourage.  

When the skills of the older bothered the younger enough he turned and Shield grabbed him.  ‘Hawkeye: The World’s Greatest Marksman’ became ‘Hawkeye: Agent of SHIELD’ and the next cog fell into place.  Had Clint and Barney Barton not been beaten daily by their father, Barney would never have taught Clint how to take that beating and keep getting up.  Had their parents not died in the car accident Clint and Barney wouldn’t have found themselves in that home with yet another abusive man.  If he hadn’t beat them, they wouldn’t have run and stumbled into the circus.  Without the circus, he’d have never learned archery.  Without archery, he wouldn’t have been recruited by SHIELD.  Without SHIELD… well, things would have turned out very differently indeed.

You see if Clint Barton hadn’t joined SHIELD it would have been someone else that had been sent to kill the Black Widow.  If that had been the case, well, more than likely the one who had would have been Coulson or maybe Hill.  They would have just got on with the job and Natalia Romanova would be buried in an unmarked grave somewhere in Russia and the rest of you would be traveling down completely different paths that probably would have never intersected.

It had been Clint though.  Clint who saw things others didn’t.  Who grew up with criminals and abusers and was good at detecting the intentions of other people.  Who could read past the lies and see the real truth in people.  It was Clint who had made another choice.

That choice had meant that Natasha had joined SHIELD.  That the two of them became friends.  Best friends.  Friends with benefits.  That when the time came that SHIELD fell they took the leap into the Avengers together.  Being in the Avengers meant being near Steve Rogers.  Being near Steve Rogers meant that when the Winter Soldier had finally shaken off the shackles of what HYDRA had made him, they were near Bucky too.

The three of them spent a while circling each other.  More like water down a drain than sharks around prey.  The problem was that a lifetime of abuse makes forming bonds difficult.  It’s hard to know what the appropriate level of affection is.  It’s hard to accept it when you expect it to be taken away or used against you.  It’s hard to interpret your own feelings.  So two would sleep together but not admit feelings, while two would dance around a dark past they were both too scared to admit to, and one guy just really had this thing for the scary dude with the metal arm and shit that was new, what could he do about that?

Would anyone say it was worth it?  That all the pain and suffering, all the lives that had been lost on the way were a fair price to pay for what they had now? Each one of them would of them change any of their pasts or the pasts of the others if it was in their power to do so.  It wasn’t that the price was fair, it was more a sense of relief that after all that, they’d found a safe place to fall.

There was still one piece of the puzzle missing.  For three people who are too scared to follow their feelings and too fucked up to recognize what they mean do not make a relationship.  There was one-quarter of the equation missing.

You.

You hadn’t had quite the ride they had.  In comparison, it was positively mundane.  There was no HYDRA or KGB in your history.  No assassin school or circus.  No one had been sent to kill you nor had you ever been sent to kill anyone else.  Maybe that’s what they needed though.  They needed the bad stuff to end so they good stuff could finally take over.

They definitely needed a coffee.

People with that level of trauma often have trouble sleeping.  Especially when they avoided doing anything to actually treat it.  Instead of sleep, they dosed up on caffeine.  Which for them meant coffee, which brought them to you at the coffee shop around the corner from the Avengers Tower.

Initially, they came for the coffee.  Over time they each realized they kept returning for you.

It wasn’t that they realized it was a romantic thing, to begin with.  Maybe the romantic parts of them had died off a long time ago anyway.  They just knew there was something about you that made them feel better.  More comfortable in the space they occupied.  More open to actually being happy.

There was no way of explaining it fully.  Maybe it was the fact you intentionally wrote Bucky’s name wrong on the cup every time, which delighted Clint.  Clint’s light-hearted ribbing led to Bucky’s relaxing into the fact that he might actually have friends.  Maybe it was the latte art you did on Natasha’s coffee that made both Bucky and Clint would tease her about.  Maybe it was the free cookies.  Or the refills.  Or the fact they just really loved the way you actually seemed to light up when they came in.  That a normal everyday person might be excited to see them.  Not because they were famous.  Just because they were them.

Maybe it was that you were just that right kind of normal that showed them how they could make their own kind of normal.

Which is what they did.  First Bucky spoke to Natasha and they got all their baggage and unpacked it together until they felt they could be something other than people hurt by the Red Room.

Next Clint told Natasha how he felt.  How he really felt.  Not just about her.  About himself and Bucky and even you.  Natasha wanted Clint to be happy above almost everything else and she realized that maybe that meant she needed to find her happiness too.

Then the three of them asked you if you’d like to hang out sometime.  Maybe get a drink.  Not coffee.

And then, and then, and then…

It was Serendipity.  A whole lot horrible things that all played an important part in getting to the good part.  Which was this.  Four people together in a way a lot of people didn’t understand.

No one else needed to.  You understood.  This worked because they needed it to, so they made it work.

“Pchelka, can you get some warm water?”

Natasha’s voice echoed through the apartment in Bedstuy you all shared.  You got up with a groan and made your way to the kitchen.  “What’s happened?”  You called back.

“Clint got his tongue stuck to James’ arm.”  She replied.

You laughed and shook your head as you turned the faucet on and waited for the water to heat up.  “Not again?”

“You might want to hurry, darling.  Clint’s trying to pull himself free.”  She called.

So… maybe there might be some more accidents along the way.  That was life after all.


End file.
